Post navigation

Safe Choices 20 – Judge insists on psychosexual evaluation

NEWPORT — At a hearing Monday in Orleans Family Court, Judge Walter Morris declined a formal request that he change his mind, and insisted that George St. Francis undergo a psycho-sexual evaluation.

In his efforts to win his freedom from court and state control, Mr. St. Francis faces official concerns that he is a potential sex offender. Judge Morris ordered the psycho-sexual evaluation in June as part of a more general evaluation of Mr. St. Francis, who was judged to be retarded by a Superior Court judge in 1996, when he was 18.

His lawyer, Susan Davis, argues that Mr. St. Francis is neither dangerous nor retarded. In the “motion for extraordinary relief” she filed with the court on July 13, Ms. Davis argued that the court lacked jurisdiction to subject her client to a procedure which she called “intimate, probing, distressing and invasive.”

However, referring to an evaluation of Mr. St. Francis that was conducted in October 2009, Judge Morris said “there is an evaluation that frankly says there is a high degree of risk.”

He added, however, that he believes the specialists who treat and measure sexual aberrations have dropped a particularly controversial piece of apparatus called the “penile plethysmograph.” In case they haven’t, he added, he would order that the plethysmograph not be used on Mr. St. Francis.

The device was used to measure a man’s response to particular types of sexual stimuli.

In her motion, Ms. Davis said that “a psycho-sexual evaluation may include up to six hours of interrogation, forced viewing of sexually suggestive or violent materials, and in some cases linking the individual’s private parts to electronic probes to determine his or her response to sexual stimuli.”

One former client of the Safe Choices program, which imposed its treatment on Mr. St. Francis for years, told the Chronicle that he had been subjected to a plethysmograph test.

Judge Morris also declined to grant Ms. Davis’ request that he put a hold on the Family Court proceedings while she appealed his decision to the Vermont Supreme Court.

Monday’s hearing was a small part of a case that has been before Family Court for well over a year.

Mr. St. Francis was under the control of a state-appointed public guardian, and a reluctant client of the Safe Choices program when it began.

The court put him under the control of a private guardian, Janet Reed, who is a determined critic of the Safe Choices program and its methods.

But Judge Morris has ruled that Ms. Reed violated the court’s order when she permitted Mr. St. Francis to get married and move out of a Northfield home in which he was to be closely supervised.

The court is struggling with the question of what to do with Mr. St. Francis next.

Meanwhile, Ms. Davis is prepared to present evidence that her client, while not of average intelligence, does not meet the low standard required to deny him the freedoms of an ordinary citizen.

Testimony from expert witnesses for Mr. St. Francis is expected at a hearing in early August.